our normal

I'm often asked what type of therapy/preschool/interventions we are doing for Joel. Here is an outline of our day:

Up at 7:00 am. Bath, frozen waffles, sesame street, then wait for the school bus to come at 7:55. I've found that if he is awake any longer than this he gets too excited for school and acts crazy for the rest of the day, so I have it timed down to the minute when he needs to wake up to keep him busy before the bus gets here. He goes to a special needs/ developmental preschool from 8-12, then back home. We eat, lunch, almost always a variation of chicken nuggets, pb&j sandwiches, waffles, or fries. Maybe a muffin or a banana. He is very, very picky about food lately, so that's something we have been working on a lot (in fact, he ate an egg salad sandwich at school the other day!). We have about an hour or so of free time, then our Habilitation worker for ABA therapy comes for a few hours. ABA therapy is Applied Behavior Analysis, where we chart a bunch of goals and watch his progress over time. Then we use the data to make new goals for teaching. Our Habilitation has been recommended for 35 hours a week-- that's a lot of time! Our worker comes every day, but we are still nowhere close to hitting that "recommended goal".

 Depending on the day, we will either have occupational therapy, speech therapy, or physical therapy during the afternoon as well. Around 5, everyone goes home and we eat dinner. Sometimes Joel goes to his respite provider's house, and sometimes we hang out as a family and wait for Rob to get home to play. Kids are in bed around 7, and I can finally use the bathroom in peace :)

Phew! They are crazy busy days, and Charlotte is in speech therapy and occupational therapy too, as well as weekly visits from her developmental specialist. We also have a couple other random things we get to do-- Joel has an eye condition that requires visits to a pediatric opthalmologist and Charlotte has tubes in her ears and has to go to the ENT periodically. Making sure we make it to all these appointments has made me crazy! But it is so rewarding to see things progressing and changing. I look at where Joel is now compared to where he is a year ago, and it is astounding,